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Friday, 24 April 2015

This week we went to Lewes for our weekly date! I used to go to University at Sussex, so it was a bit of a blast from the past, and it was good to explore again.

Lewes is great if you are on the hunt for Antiques, and quirky old stuff! The first place we found was Lewes Flea Market, which is a treasure trove of weird and wonderful things!

Next we stopped in on a lovely little shop called Mary's which stocked some really cute items, as well as sweets! I bought some pretty cards here as I felt I couldn't leave with nothing!

I remembered from previous visits that there was a Bill's here, so we decided to head there for lunch! Chris picked a beautiful, if rather effeminate, drink.

We both had ham hock and pea terrine with caramelised onions as a starter, which was really nice! Then we had sea bass with potato rosti and tomato and avocado salsa. I ate that too quickly before I remembered to take a photo, but it looked great and was equally delicious! Aside from the food, Bills has such a fun atmosphere, and I'd really recommend going to one if you haven't been before.

We wandered around some more antiques shops located near to Bills, and then decided it was time for a drink in the sunshine! On our way we found a really awesome shop called Closet and Botts, which had a bit of a rustic feel and had some really interesting bits and bobs!

We found a pub called The Rights of Man which had a roof terrace garden, so we decided to stay a while and enjoy a drink. It felt like summer!

After we had finished our drinks we decided to take a walk near Lewes Castle. We decided not to go in this time but maybe we will on another adventure, it was still a really nice walk seeing it from a distance.

Have you been to Lewes before? What were your favourite things to see and do?

Monday, 20 April 2015

Hey guys, you might have noticed I've had a cheeky week off blogging this week. I've been trying to put together the finishing touches on our wedding album using Blurb, and it seems to be taking up a huge amount of time! Nevertheless, it shall be perfect when it is finished!

Anyway, I have had time to complete a project for the lounge which I have been meaning to do for some time, hurrah! In this post I talked about how I planned to make a wall hanging out of a beautiful piece of wrapping paper I bought. I wasn't looking forward to it to be honest, mainly because the DIY I had planned to follow involved sawing, staining and screwing, none of which I have the equipment for!

But thanks to a trip to the Hobbycraft shop, I figured out a way to do it without any of that stuff at all! Namely, the discovery of balsa wood! And so, with this revelation, I thought I would share the 'no saw' (get it!?) process with you!

Ok, so the great thing about balsa wood is that it is so lightweight, and can therefor be cut using a regular craft knife! I started by measuring all of my pieces carefully, marking them all slightly longer than the poster edges, then cutting them all to size.

The other great thing is that the wood is so soft, you can sand the rough edges once this is done using a nail file! Or if you are more prepared you can just use sand paper ;)

I wanted to make the wood look more expensive, but I didnt have any wood stain, so I simply mixed some dark brown watercolour paint with water, and painted it that way. I think it came out really well!

Once the wood is completely dry (I used a hair dryer to hurry this process along) you need to put your double sided sticky tape along both pieces of the wood that will go on the bottom. Make sure you put the sticky on the side you don't want facing out.

Then you will need to pull the top coat off of the sticky on your thinnest piece of wood, and line it up under the back of the bottom of the page. You do have to be quite careful here and it is a bit tricky. I marked on my piece of wood where is should come to so that it wouldn't end up wonky. Then peel the top coat of sticky off the other piece of wood, and again, line this up really carefully on top of the other piece, with the poster sandwiched in between.

The top of the hanging is a little more tricky because you need to include your string in it. I wanted to use yellow string, but I didn't have any, so again I used my trusty watercolours to dye the string!

I took a length of string and made sure that it would be the right length to hang at the height I wanted it. Then I tied a knot at each end so that when it was sandwiched in between both pieces of wood it would make it a bit more sturdy.

I then repeated the process of putting sticky tape on the wood for the top, and I worked out how my string would sit on the thinner piece of wood (because you want the knot to come out of the back), when I was happy with it I added another layer of double sided sticky tape on top.

Then I just stuck the wood to the poster as I had done on the bottom!

And Tadaa, it was finished!

This cost me less than £20 in total, which I think is pretty decent. Unfortunately the Balsa wood is quite expensive, but its still cheaper and much easier than using proper wood, so I think it is a winner! I'm chuffed that I have now hung the first picture in my lounge, I can't wait to get the rest up and show you them!

Friday, 10 April 2015

A while back Chris and I started a habit of making sure we went on weekly dates. Each week we had to base the date on a letter of the alphabet. You can see our alphabet dates here. Unfortunately, we only got to D before we gave up. It turns out that theming dates on letters is actually quite tricky! We did continue our weekly dates for a while without the letters to hold us back, but then life got in the way for a while.

But for the past month or so, we have been making a conscious effort to go out on weekly dates again. This time we have just decided to go and explore a town or village each time. So far we have been to Winchester, Southsea, Bournemouth and The New Forest. I thought it might be nice to document the things we do and the places we see to unearth any hidden treasures, and give you some ideas if you want to visit. Or, if you have been before and have any suggestions of places to go you can add to the conversation in the comments section!

So, on Wednesday we visited Arundel in West Sussex. Despite driving past Arundel Castle on my way to and from Sussex Uni many moons ago, I had never actually visited, so this was our first stop!

Arundel Castle has a variety of ticket choices, and so you can pick from paying £9 each for a bronze ticket, which only really includes the castle grounds and gardens, all the way up to gold for £18 which lets you get inside the whole castle including the bedrooms.

We went for the silver ticket which meant we payed £12.10 each and could see the grounds, gardens and also inside the Castle Keep. They also offer a Gift Aid scheme wherein if you pay a voluntary 10% gift aid then you get double that donation to spend each in the coffee shop. We thought this was a great idea and it was nice to get an ice lolly and drink inside!

Since it was such a sunny day and we wanted to spend most of it outside, we probably could have just gone for a bronze ticket, and spent all our time looking at the beautiful gardens, and the castle from outside. But it was nice to get a glimpse inside the castle too.

My favourite bit was definitely the walled garden! It was really pretty spectacular! It included loads of beautiful colourful flowers, and also had lots of wooden sculptures, fountains, and GOLD!

I think this fountain was the prettiest!

After we had finished wandering the grounds we popped into Arundel for a spot of lunch. We found a nice little place called Pappardelle Ristorante and Osteria (I think they must have had an update because the pictures on the website do not look like the same place inside). The decor was rustic and modern and I particularly liked their copper tables. I ordered a WooWoo!

The menu looked pretty delicious too, and in the end Chris and I both ordered the Duck Salad. It. Was. Yum.

After eating we went for a look around the village. I really liked the look of their local Butchers!

We found some fantastic Antique shops. The one pictured below had some really unusual (and expensive) pieces inside. Can you see the Hippo in the window?

There were also more antique shops hidden behind this one, all selling pretty cool stuff. I liked this room pictured below in particular, it seemed to have an industrial chic theme mixed in with a bit of vintage school ware.

Monday, 6 April 2015

Happy Easter chaps! I hope you are all having a great bank holiday weekend!

I've been having a lovely time, with family, friends and lots of crafting! We had a couple of our friends over on Friday night for a dinner party, and they brought us the pretty tulips in the picture above. We ate lots and had a fun time playing Cards Against Humanity!

On Saturday I started some craft projects. I recently bought a little loom from Tiger. I think it's really meant for children, but it only cost £7 and I have wanted to give some weaving a go for a while now. I'm not sure if I like how this one is turning out yet, but we'l see how we go!

I also tried my hand at some sculpting using air dry clay. If the project turns out well I'm sure I will post a little tutorial about it.

We spent the rest of Saturday playing the new Resident Evil game and then watching films!

Yesterday I had a nice catch up and coffee with with a friend, before heading out to have lunch with the family. My Mother-in-Law surprised us with a build your own Sundae competition, which was great! Really we all won because we got ice cream and lots of treats!

Today I am plotting the final touches to our lounge re-decoration. As I said in this post, I was on the hunt for some botanical style pictures to hang, and now, thanks to lots of help, I am spoilt for choice!

My friend's Mum read that last blog post, and spotted a book while she was out and about which she very kindly bought for me! It's got lots of cute little illustrations of plants, animals and trees inside with the name of each written below it. Lots of which include the colour yellow which will fit perfectly with the yellow and grey theme we've got going on! I love the cover of the book too! I think I'll maybe pick 4 pages and arrange them together all in one frame.

Chris also found me a book whilst visiting an antique shop which had lots of botanical pictures inside. It only cost £1 so I snapped it up and got to work ripping it (neatly) to pieces! The pictures below are just some of them, but there are a few I think would work so I might make a little picture trio to go beside our shelves.

If you remember, I also wanted some sort of botanical wall hanging/chart, and I think we may have cracked this one too! While my Mum was out shopping the other day she came across some wrapping paper with butterflies on it. Knowing that it was the sort of thing I was after she sent me the name of the company that made it. I looked it up online and unfortunately it was an American company, but then I found a UK ebay shop which sold loads of different papers made by this company, and they were all beautiful! In the end I managed to limit myself to just buying 4 (including the one I initially wanted).

I decided that I would buy these papers and then turn them into wall hangings myself. Whilst I was researching how I could do this, I found the most wonderful tutorial, using the very same paper no less! What a weird coincidence! Here is the what their finished product looked like, and you can find the tutorial on the Chris Loves Julia Blog.

Wednesday, 1 April 2015

Since I made my doughnut collar the other week, I have become slightly obsessed with doughnuts! And this led me to creating my very own doughnut pin cushion! It could actually be used for a number of things, not least just sitting there and looking pretty, but as I have now taking up dress making I have been in desperate need of somewhere to store my pins!

You will need;

Felt - Brown an Pink (I chose to use 2 shades of brown)

Matching embroidery threads

Variety of coloured embroidery threads (for the sprinkles!)

Stuffing

My doughnut template which you can download here. Make sure you download it before you print it otherwise it will come out a different size.

A needle

Pins

Scissors

Beads (optional)

Print out my template and cut it out, then pin it to each piece of felt in turn, and cut out.

When finished you should have 3 doughnut shapes like this;

The pink is going to be the icing, so you need to trim this a little around the edges to make it look like the picture below;

Now pin the pink felt on to the darker brown felt, and start stitching them together with 2 strands of the pink embroidery thread, using blanket stitch. If you aren't quite sure how to do this you can see a tutorial here.

Then stitch around the edge of the brown felt using the matching thread and blanket stitch. Keep it even and as tight as it will go without puckering. You can see a tutorial on how to stitch blanket stitch on an edge here. I'll explain later why we are doing this.

Add your sprinkles! You can use whatever coloured embroidery thread you like here, and even beads if you fancy it! Make sure the fabric stays flat and doesn't pucker as you stitch.

The next bit gets slightly complicated. The way we are going to attach the lighter brown felt to make the bottom part of the doughnut, is by using blanket stitch again. But, remember how we stitched around the edge of the darker brown felt earlier? This was so that we would have something to stitch on to, so that we can join both pieces together. So start with the inner circle and do your blanket stitch, hooking it into a stitch on the other piece of felt each time. It's quite important that you try to keep the stitches as even as possible to make sure they match up.

Take a look at the picture below to see what I mean. I just used some scraps of fabric to illustrate the technique more clearly to you, the stitches are a lot bigger than you will sew them.

Next you need to stitch the outside circle together in the same way, but once you have done about a quarter of it you need to start stuffing it as you go, so that it is distributed evenly across the whole doughnut. It needs to be pretty densely packed, but make sure your seams don't pop open too far. As long as your stitches were quite small this shouldn't be too much of a problem. Keep on sewing and stuffing, sewing and stuffing until you get back to the beginning, then tie off and you are done!

Here is what the finished product should hopefully look like;

I'm super happy with how it turned out, and I shall look forward to my sewing projects even more now! I kind of want to make a whole box of doughnuts this way, but I don't think I have enough pins to necessitate it! Can you think of any other uses they could have?

I think this would make a great gift though, and they could be made in lots of different colours. What do you think?